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Christina Firpo

Assistant Professor
Southeast Asia
E-mail: cfirpo@calpoly.edu
Office: Bldg. 47, Room 25N
Phone: (805)756-2863

EDUCATION

Ph.D University of California at Los Angeles
M.A. University of California at Los Angeles
B.A. The George Washington University

RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS

Currently revising book manuscript titled “‘Abandoned’ Children: The Forcible Removal of Mixed-Race Children in Colonial Vietnam 1890-1956.”
Currently revising article titled “The Mother, the Nation: Colonial Paternalism and Vietnamese Maternalism in the Great Depression.”
Currently revising article titled “Human Capital: A Social History of Human Trafficking in Colonial Vietnam.”
Other research and teaching interests include:
- Race, Gender and Family in Colonial Vietnam
- Colonial Networks of Human Trafficking in Mainland Southeast Asia
- The History of Prostitution in Colonial Vietnam
- Race, Nation, and Reproduction

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2011 “Shades of Whiteness: Petits-Blancs and the Politics of Military Allocations Distribution in World War I Colonial Cochinchina.” French Historical Studies, (Vol. 34:2, 2011).
2011 “Hierarchies of Race and Gender in the French Colonial Empire, 1914-1946,” with Jennifer Boittin and Emily Musil. Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques (Vol. 37, 2011).
2010 “Crisis of Whiteness and Empire in Colonial Indochina: The Removal of Eurasian Children from the Vietnamese Milieu, 1890-1956” Journal of Social History, (Vol. 43, 2010) 587-613.
2007 “Lost Boys: ‘Abandoned’ Eurasian Children and the Management of the Racial Topography in Colonial Indochina, 1938-1945.” French Colonial History (Vol. 8, 2007) 203-224.
2005 “‘President Ho Speaks to the Children’: Thieu Sinh Magazine and the New Child in 1945 Revolutionary Vietnam” Southeast Review of Asian Studies (Vol. 27, 2005) 37-48.

Awards & Honors

2009 Humanitarian Service Learning Grant, California Polytechnic State University.
2009 American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant.
2009 Robert Detweiler Research Grant, California Polytechnic State University.
2008-2009 Honors Program Research Grant, California Polytechnic State University.
2007-2008 Honors Program Research Grant, California Polytechnic State University.
2004 Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Year Fellowship—Vietnam and France
2003-2004 University of California Pacific Rim Research Program Research Fellowship—Vietnam and France.
2002-2003 UCLA Graduate School Research Mentorship Fellowship.
2001 Vietnam Advanced Studies Institute Fellowship in Vietnam.
2000-2001 UCLA Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship—Vietnamese.
2000-2001 UCLA University Regents Stipend.

Recent Conference Papers and Presentations

2011 “Human Capital: A Social History of Human Trafficking in Colonial Vietnam,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Amherst, 10-13 June 2011.
2011 “Who is French? Mixed-Race Children in the First Indochina War,” Annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies, Charleston, 10-13 February 2011.
2010 “Race, Imperialism, and Childhood: A Comparative Study of the Forcible Removal of Biracial Children in French Indochina, Australia, the US, and Canada,” Annual meeting of the California World History Association, Sacramento, 23 October 2010.
2010 “Activism, Feminism, and Other Threats: The 1937 Guernut Mission and the Reformation of the Eurasian Welfare System in Indochina,” Annual Meeting of the French Colonial History Society, Paris, France, 17 June 2010.
2009 “The Erotic Métis: Sexual Adventures and Paternalism in Early 20th Century Colonial Indochina,” Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, Boulder, 24 October 2009.
2009 “Les Crises Blanches en Indochine 1890-1954” Presented at the colloquium series for the Ecole Francais d’Extreme Orient. Paris, France, 19 June 2009.
2008 “‘Abandoned’ Children’ in Colonial Indochina: Historical Problems” Invited Speaker for University of California-Riverside Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, Performance Spring 2008 Colloquium Series, 15 May 2008.
2008 “’Abandoned Children: The Changing Racial Perception of Mixed Race Children in Colonial Vietnam 1870-1956.“ Association of Asian Studies in Atlanta, Georgia, 3 April 2008.
2007 “The Battle of Third Republican Ideals: Race, Gender and ‘French’ Families in World War I Colonial Cochinchina” Western Society of French Historians, in Albuquerque New Mexico, 7 November 2007.
2007 “Working Mothers and Orphaned Children: The Depression-Era Poverty Relief Program in Colonial Vietnam.” Association of Asian Studies in Boston, Massachusetts, 29 March 2007.
2006 “The 1910 Riots at Hung Hoa: Empire, Race, and Eurasian Child Laborers at the Collège d’Agricole in Indochine” Western Society of French Historians, in Long Beach, California, 21 October 2006.
2006 “Local Mothers, Foreign Babies: Government Policies on Eurasian Children in Colonial Vietnam” World History Association in Long Beach, California, 25 June 2006.
2006 “Locating and Re-Locating Children: Vietnamese Feminists and the Colonial Orphanage System in the 1930s.” Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference in San Francisco, 8 April 2006.
2006 “National and Individual Sovereignty: Orphanages, Children and the 1945 Revolution in Vietnam” American Historical Association Annual Conference in Philadelphia, January 8, 2006.

Courses Taught

History 200 Independent Study
- “Pre-colonial Cambodia”
- “The History of Prostitution in the West”
- “Imperialism and Post Colonial Studies”
- “Human Trafficking in Cambodia”
History 223 Modern World History
History 303 Seminar: Race, Sex, and Orientalism in Colonial Southeast Asia
History 319 South and Southeast Asian History
History 421 History of Prostitution
History 443 Vietnamese History
History 459 Imperialism and Post Colonial Studies
History 460/461 Senior Project
History 505 Imperialism and Post Colonial Studies
Honors 200 Human Trafficking in Colonial Southeast Asia